Stemming the tide of overtreatment in U.S. healthcare

(Reuters) - A
leading group of U.S. doctors is trying to tackle the costly problem of
excessive medical testing, hoping to avoid more government intervention
in how they practice.

The American College of
Physicians (ACP), the largest U.S. medical specialty group, is rolling
out guidelines to help doctors better identify when patients should
screen for specific diseases and when they can be spared the cost, and
potentially invasive procedures that follow.

Many
individual U.S. medical centers have launched their own efforts to
build a protocol of patient care in fields such as diabetes or
obstetrics, but the ACP effort has the potential to influence doctors
nationally. ACP members include more than 132,000 physicians, mainly
focused on internal medicine.

"Excessive
testing costs $200 billion to $250 billion (per year)," Dr. Steven
Weinberger, CEO of ACP said in an interview from his office in
Philadelphia. "There's an overuse of imaging studies, CT scans for lung
disease, overuse of routine electrocardiograms and other cardiac tests
such as stress testing."

For Full Article: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/16/us-overtreatment-idUSTRE81F0UF20120216